After hours in AerFab. Roubani was on last shift - most of his general underlings left the engineering batcave and went off to pursue showers or food. The Ensign, though, drifted upstairs. Where he is now, duty shirt off and leaving him in his drab double tanks, arm still in its blue sling. He's seated at the clean console, elbow braced on the table so his closed hand can support his cheek as he stares at code scrolling by on the screen. Nearby, a small portable radio relays pilot chatter during their atmo exercise down on Periander IV.

Sen wanders up here, drawn by the seclusion and the knowledge that there's still unfinished work to be done. She's in her blues, though the lapel is unfastened and the flap laying open. Cellophane crinkles as she unwraps a piece of hard candy, cherry flavored this time, and it's popped into her mouth before she spies Roubani at one of the clean machines. "Ensign. Seems you suffer the same affliction as I do."

Roubani's dark eyes flick up without any movement of his head. Then they flick to the screens, the table, the candy, then back to her face. "…poor posture, sir?"

Sen sucks against the sweet, the thing clacking against her teeth before she comments. "More like the inability to turn your brain off after your shift is over." She comments, then leans over his shoulder to peer at the screen. "We getting any where?" It's curiousity not an accusation.

Roubani shifts in the chair, rolling his left shoulder. It makes an irritated cracking sound. "I believe so." He chews on the corner of his bottom lip, tapping a couple keys and sitting back to let her see better. "I've been going through the deep strings of the virus code. Haven't gotten through everything, but…well, have a look. Do you see these execute strings?" He runs a finger along several of the lines. "They look very targetted to me. Like this line here…seems like it's designed to trigger a loop to shut down some of the inner security protocols."

Sen hooks the other desk chair over, the squeak of its wheels enough to make a proud ChEng wince slightly. Add that to the list. She drops into the seat, pulling up next to Roubani to see what he's trying to point out. "So we know how it evaded our scans." Eyes flick to the side as she hears some…interesting chatter. "You can take the Ensign out of airwing, but you can't take the airwing out of the Ensign."

Roubani gives her a thin smile, glancing at the radio. "I worry about them, I suppose." He rolls the chair a little to give her space, rubbing his fingertips over his forehead. Focus. "As far as I can tell, it masked most of its strings to appear friendly to our scans. It's quite ingenious considering how sophisticated our systems are."

Sen squints at the screen, shifting the candy to the other side of her mouth and smacking on it loudly as she considers the code. "You ever play computerized Chess, Ensign?" She asks, seemingly out of the blue.

It takes Roubani's brain a second to shift gears after she breaks the clutch like that. He scratches a hand through his hair, raising an eyebrow curiously. "Yes, sir, quite often."

Sen's eye are focused on the screen instead of the man sitting next to her. "You start the program up, you choose the difficulty, and then it seemingly randomly choses who starts first." She glances aside to him. "At least in the version I play. Then, if it's the computers version, it draws from a data bank of finite options for its starting moves. Now think, if the chess pieces started deciding for themselves, where they wanted to move and when." Her gaze goes back to the screen. "Originally, the Cylons were as smart as we made them. We should have stopped at the assembly line model."

Roubani's eyes shift back to the screen. "Hubris," is the murmured response. He turns his chair forward, tapping a few more keys. "There is always a price to pay."

Sen mms quietly, watching what he's doing, but not interrupting his keystrokes. She's not a backseat typer. "Now we just have to figure out how these data transmissions entered our systems in the first place. I'm not comfortable just assuming now that we can identify /this/ strain of malicious code, that we'll be able to identify if they try it again. I don't know about you, but I'm not really up for a repeat performance." CRUNCH. Sen bites into the piece of candy, now that it's worn a little thin in her mouth.

"Well…" Roubani glances at her mouth at the CRUNCH, then back to the screen. "Here's what bothers me, sir. The virus is quite advanced in how it executes once in the system, but if you look at the initial strings of the code…it's terribly simple. My laptop from ten years ago would have been able to detect this if it came knocking at the firewall."

Sen props an elbow on the console, her temple resting on a palm and fingers threading into her hair. "So some Private didn't open an electronic message from CylonLover-two-two-seven, and accidently download this?"

"No, sir," Roubani replies, drily. "It was not attached to porn."

Sen smiles slightly, though the expression doesn't bloom fully on her lips. "You know what I mean. So it's safe to say, they didn't magically make this materialize from afar. It wasn't remotely injected into our system…" The realization makes her blanch. "Inside job?" She practically whispers the implication.

Roubani doesn't say anything for a while. His left hand gently picks at his lower lip as his eyes flicker over the lines of code that he's read a hundred times. "Not only inside," he says under his breath. "But very high clearance. High enough to get behind multiple levels of security without alerting it." His brow lofts slightly, head making a slight shake as he goes through said levels in his head. "Sir, this…this is terrifying."

Sen turns her head, her palm the pivot and now her forehead is resting in it. "No, it was terrifying. Now it's just down right tragic. The question that begs to be answered now, is was it just us? Or was this the window they used to destroy the rest of the Colonial Military."

Roubani thins his lips, glancing at her and then back at the screen. "I don't know. If they were able to bypass such high security locks it's certainly not a stretch to think they could have affected far more than us." He runs his ring finger between his eyes. "But it simply doesn't make sense, Captain. A centurion couldn't have strolled in and done this…and it couldn't have been installed remotely, even with bypasses engaged. I mean, are we honestly prepared to say that one of us…" He can't even quite finish that, his voice kept very low.

Sen exhales a long breath, "I better report this to Command." She says, her face uncharacteristically stoic. It has 'omg this is bad' written all over it. "Good work, Ensign." Though that praise is certainly bittersweet. She pushes back from the console, to go march the ill tidings up the ladder of command.

The praise goes sailing by Roubani. His body is tenser than it was a few minutes ago, his closed hand against his lips. He nods to Sen, once. "I'll keep looking at it," he murmurs, then glances up to catch her before she goes. "Did you receive the report about the hull? I haven't cracked the board on that blinking barnacle yet, but it'll be done soon."

Sen has a one track mind sometimes, and right now all she can see is a big red 'TRAITOR' sign flashing across her minds eye. Who could it be? Who could have done this? One of her men is working for the machines? "Hmm? Right. Just, take two aspirin for that. I'm sure it'll clear up by morning." Clearly unaware of what he just asked her. But she's headed to the hatch, it'll require further clarification later.

"Alright, sir," Roubani calls back, without anything further. If he understands anything it's work blinders, and he'll likely just start cracking into it and plop the report on her desk tomorrow night.